Crow Returns to Closing Table for $54.2M Refi

DALLAS-Crow Holdings has walked away with $54.2 million by refinancing five industrial properties in five US cities. It’s the second large refinancing in four months for the privately held Dallas-based REIT.

The latest package is collateralized by 1.8 million sf of assets in Austin, Dallas, Houston, Boston and Olive Branch, MS in the Memphis distribution district. The holdings are 99% leased.

John W. Rose, associate director of the Dallas office for Holliday Fenoglio Fowler LP, arranged the financing through Connecticut General Life Insurance Co., a unit of the CIGNA Corp. Rose tells GlobeSt.com that “these are unencumbered assets that didn’t have any debt on them.” Still, he’s not at liberty to say what Crow Holdings intends to do with the capital gleaned from the five-year refi. The loan bears a fixed rate, also being kept under wraps, with a 30-year amortization.

Rose says there are no large lease rollovers during the loan term. Crow Holdings Industrial Trust is the borrower of record. From start to finish, the refinancing took 60 days, says Rose.

The Crow industrial portfolio’s Dallas asset is a newly constructed, 223,000-sf structure leased for 10 years to North American Van Lines at the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport. The Austin holding is a 1986 building, totaling 96,284 sf, at 11500 Metric Blvd. In Houston suburb of Stafford, it’s the one-year-old Southwest Techniplex D&E, a 177,288-sf design at 4655 Wright Rd. The Boston property is the 312,344-sf One Beeman Rd., constructed in 1985. And in Memphis, it’s a newly built, one-million-sf distribution hub for Johnson & Johnson operated by Exel Logistics.

Rose confides it’s the fourth portfolio that Crow’s refinanced in three years through Holliday Fenoglio Fowler. In mid-March, Rose finalized a $36.3-million refinance of 17 properties in the Midway district situated halfway between St. Paul and Minneapolis. Archon Financial put up the money leveraged by 12 warehouse or distribution facilities and five office buildings, totaling 1.6 million sf.